According to one press account, attendees at a House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi dinner party broke out in spontaneous celebration at the news of House Majority leader Eric Cantor's defeat in the Virginia Republican primary by a relatively unknown challenger last week. Given the depth of the partisan animosity in Washington, the reaction may have been pure schadenfreude But I suspect it may have also been because the Democrats gathered at Peolsi's party realized that Cantor's loss probably means there will be no comprehensive immigration reform for some time.

Now you are probably saying, "What are you talking about? Democrats are in favor of immigration reform." And you are right. They are. But the truth is, the current logjam over immigration reform in Washington is a political gift to Democrats that just keeps on giving.

Every year that rolls by without solving the immigration problem, another 800,000 Latinos who are U.S. citizens turn 18 and become eligible to vote. Many of those coming of age are deeply resentful of Republicans, who they believe have disparaged and disrespected their family members by calling them criminals. They also hold Republicans responsible for keeping their older brothers and sisters and friends, who were brought here as children, in a legal purgatory with no way out.

And as the immigration issue continues to fester, Republicans are beginning to alienate other groups traditionally sympathetic to their ideas. Recently, a coalition of Latino evangelicals has been joined by other evangelicals in demanding immigration reform. Republicans do not seem to get that just because someone agrees with you on abortion, it does not mean they are going to vote for you so you can deport their grandmother. Of course, the business community, a traditional Republican funding source, has long since split the sheets with the Republican grass roots on this issue.

And then there is the matter of that vast majority of Americans who want to see immigration reform that includes a legal status for those who came here illegally. A poll released just this week by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution found that 79 percent of Americans favor some kind of legal status for unlawful immigrants. A pathway to full citizenship is favored by 62 percent of Americans. Only 19 percent now say that those who came here without a visa should be deported. How you can expect to win national elections when you take positions that 80 percent of the American people oppose is a mystery to me and many others.

The problem for the Republican Party is that the 19 percent who want to deport everyone dominate their grass roots and primaries. Ironically, the polls show that even a majority of Republicans favor immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship. But the turnout in primaries is so low that they tend to be dominated by those with the most extreme views. Which is why we need to reform the primary system, but I digress.

Almost every Republican candidate that came through the editorial board this year told us that immigration was the hot button issue for Republican primary voters. So to get through a Republican primary, candidates have to take a position on immigration that is at odds with a sweeping majority of Americans and increasingly political suicide by demography for the party.

Ironically, Cantor's loss may not have really been all that attributable to the immigration issue. Erick Erickson, a well-known conservative blogger and columnist, has a piece on FoxNews.com arguing that Cantor's loss had more to do with his personal style and political ineptness than it did about immigration. It is always risky to read too much into the results of local elections regarding national issues. As former U.S. House Speaker Tip O'Neill famously quipped, "All politics is local."

But in politics, perception is often reality. And there is no doubt that Cantor's loss has thrown up a serious road block to what was increasingly looking like a move toward a compromise on immigration this year. And if nothing is done before the 2014 election, it is even harder to imagine getting anything done in the lead-up to a presidential election.

And it will be an unmitigated disaster for Republicans if they go into 2016 with immigration reform still on the table. You simply cannot lose 70-80 percent of the Latino vote and put together an Electoral College majority. So there may well have been a bottle of champagne popped at the Clinton home as well last week when the results from Virginia came in.

King's column appears Thursday and Sunday. Email King at weking@weking.net and follow him at twitter.com/weking.